Frequently Asked Questions

TravelStory is a place to record and share your trips - motorhome tours, road trips, boat excursions, anything with a route. It tracks where you went, keeps your photos and videos in order alongside the route, logs fuel stops per vehicle, and lets you check in and leave reviews for the places you stop at along the way.

It's organized as Journeys: the whole tour ("Portugal 2026") is a journey, and each driving/sailing leg inside it is a Trip. A journey can hold as many trips as it needs.

The web app at travelstory.world works from any browser and is the best place for bulk photo uploads, reviewing your route on a big screen, and managing your account. The iOS app is currently distributed through TestFlight (Apple's beta channel, not yet the public App Store) and is where live GPS tracking actually happens - a browser can't record your position while your phone is in your pocket.

An Android app is now in active development, but isn't distributed anywhere yet (no Play Store listing) - for now, Android users should use the web app.

Yes - journeys, photos, and everything else are tied to your account so only you (and anyone you choose to share with) can see them. The same login works across every platform TravelStory runs on - the web app, the iOS app, and (once it's released) the Android app.

Yes - you must be 18 or older. TravelStory is an adult service, and we ask for your date of birth at sign-up to confirm this.

TravelStory is currently in private beta, so open sign-ups aren't available yet. Starting the sign-up flow (on either platform) first asks if you'd like to apply to become a beta tester. Saying yes takes you to a short application (email, name, username, password), followed by a Beta Tester Confidentiality Agreement you read and sign by typing your full name.

Once submitted, your account exists but can't log in yet - you'll get access once your application is approved. There's no separate notification when that happens yet, so if it's been a while, just try logging in.

A journey is the overall tour - a name, a date range, and everything that happened during it. A trip is one leg of that journey: a single drive, sail, or GPS recording session. A two-week motorhome tour might be one journey made up of six trips, one per driving day.

Only one journey can be open(not yet ended) at a time across your whole account, and the same is true for trips within it. This keeps "which trip is currently recording" unambiguous. You can still have as many ended journeys as you like sitting in your history - the limit is only ever one active one.

The Journeys list can be grouped by Recent, Year, Month, or your own custom Folders, and filtered further once you've picked a grouping. There's also a search box across journey names.

Open the journey and pick a folder from its own page - folder assignment lives there rather than on the journeys list itself, to keep the list uncluttered.

Yes, but it's deliberately hard to do by accident. Open the journey and choose Delete Journeyfrom its action buttons (alongside Map, Photos, and the rest) and you'll be taken to a confirmation page that explains exactly what will be lost, requires you to tick a box acknowledging that, and requires you to type YES DELETE THIS JOURNEY before the delete button will even work.

Deleting a journey permanently removes its trips, GPS tracks, photos and videos, fuel logs, and annotations. Check-ins and reviews you left at real-world places are kept - those belong to the place, not the journey, so deleting a journey doesn't erase your history there.

Yes - a journey's Map screen has an Import Track option that accepts a .gpx file (a recorded track) or a .kml/.kmzfile (a planned route, e.g. exported from Google Maps). If the file has no timestamps of its own - common for a planned route - you'll be asked for a start and end date so it can be placed on your timeline correctly.

Yes. Open a trip's Settings (the gear icon next to it) and pick from a set of preset colours. Colour is per-trip, so a journey made of several legs can show each one differently on the map - or leave it unset to use the default.

Open the journey, select or create a trip, and tap Start Tracking. The app records your position in the background - you don't need to keep it open - and keeps going until you tap Stop Trackingor end the trip. This is an iOS feature today; it's built for Android too and will work the same way there once the Android app is released.

Points are cached on your phone as they're recorded and uploaded once you're back in range, so a tunnel, ferry crossing, or dead zone doesn't lose data. While the app is in the foreground it also takes a position fix every five minutes even if you haven't moved, so a long stop (moored, parked up, anchored) still shows up rather than leaving a gap.

Background GPS tracking does use noticeably more battery than normal phone use, since it requests the highest accuracy fix available rather than a coarse one. Worth keeping your phone on a charger or power bank during a long driving day if you're tracking the whole way.

Every recorded point captures your speed and heading at that moment alongside the coordinates, ready for statistics and analysis features built on top of your tracking history.

From inside a journey, use Add Phototo upload one at a time (or a handful) straight from your camera roll - this is the everyday way to add a few photos to whichever trip you've got selected. For uploading a whole folder at once, see Bulk Upload below.

Bulk Upload (under the main menu) is built for dumping an entire folder of photos and videos in one go - hundreds of files from a camera or old phone backup - rather than picking a journey first. Point it at a folder and it will:

• Skip anything you've already uploaded before (checked by file content, not filename)
• Skip anything over the site's size limit for that file type
• Read each file's date/location metadata and file it straight into whichever of your journeys covers that date

If your browser closes or your connection drops partway through, just pick the same folder again - anything already handled is skipped automatically, so you pick up where you left off rather than starting over.

A photo lands there instead of being guessed at when TravelStory can't be confident which journey it belongs to:

• No date found - the file has no capture-date metadata at all (common for screenshots, or photos re-saved by another app).
• Matches more than one journey - its date falls inside two journeys at once.
• Doesn't match any journey- its date doesn't fall inside any journey you've created yet.

Open Unplaced Media, pick the right journey for each one (or discard it), and it's filed properly from then on.

Yes, both the everyday upload and Bulk Upload accept video files alongside photos, up to the site's video size limit.

If a photo's own date metadata is clearly outside the journey (or specific trip) you were adding it to, it's rejected rather than filed under the wrong place - that almost always means the wrong file was picked from your camera roll. A photo with no date metadata at all is let through, since there's nothing to say it's wrong.

Toggle it on from a journey's Map screen to see nearby restaurants, shops, attractions, and other real-world places as icons on top of your route - each category gets its own icon (a knife and fork for dining, and so on). Filter to a single category, or turn the layer off entirely if you just want to see your track.

They're two separate, independent actions:

• Check inis a single tap that logs a timestamp, the place, and your location - a simple "I was here," nothing more.
• Review is a star rating plus an optional written note about the place itself.

You can do either, both, or neither for any place you visit.

If a real-world place you visited isn't showing up, you can add it yourself directly from the map - search for it by name, and if it doesn't already exist, create it on the spot.

Motorhome, Boat, and Car are built in as named types. Anything else - bike, on foot, aircraft, whatever you're touring in - goes under Other, where you describe how it's powered (engine, wind, gravity, or self-powered) and what medium it moves through (ground, air, or water).

Log a fuel stop from inside a trip and it's attributed to whichever vehicle that trip is using - useful later for tracking fuel spend and consumption per vehicle over time. Diesel and Petrol are both supported; a vehicle with no fuel type (a bike, or anything foot-powered) simply doesn't show the Fuel Stop option at all.

Yes - vehicles live on your profile, independent of any one journey, so your motorhome (or boat, or car) is set up once and available to pick from every time you start a new trip.

A companion is a friend you've tagged as travelling with you, given permission to add their own photos and notes to your journey - useful when you're touring together but each carrying your own phone. You can tag them against the whole journey, or just one specific trip within it, and they only get access once they accept the invite.

Search for their username and send a request from the Friends section; they'll see it in their notifications and can accept or decline. Once you're friends, you can tag them as a companion on a journey, and (depending on how you've set that journey's visibility) they may be able to see it too.

Just you. Every journey starts Private, and stays that way unless you change it. You choose visibility per journey, so a family tour can be shared while a solo trip stays completely private.

• Private - only you.
• Friends - visible to your accepted friends.
• Workspace - visible to members of your TravelStory workspace.
• Group- a specific friend circle you've set up yourself (photos only - not available for a whole journey).
• Public - listed publicly and viewable by anyone with the link.
• Unlisted - viewable by anyone with the direct link, same as Public, but never appears in any public listing. Treat the link itself as the access control - anyone who has it can view it.

A journey needs at least something for a viewer to actually see before it can go Public or Unlisted - a recorded or imported route, a photo set to Public, or a public note. A brand new journey never qualifies yet (there's nothing on it), and an existing one won't either if all its photos are still individually set to Private. Remember that photos have their own visibility separate from the journey's - making the journey Public doesn't automatically make its photos Public too.

Only if you turn it on. By default, sharing a journey only publishes a trip once it's finished - viewers never see one still in progress. Turning on live tracking lets them see an in-progress trip too, but only once it clears a buffer you set yourself: a minimum delay in minutes anda minimum distance in miles from your current position (both have to be satisfied, and either can be set to zero to disable that particular check). The buffer exists specifically so a live-shared journey can't be used to pinpoint exactly where you are right now.

You can always export your own journey as a GPX file, regardless of its visibility. For anyone else - a Public or Unlisted viewer - that's a separate opt-in toggle you control per journey; turning it on doesn't change who can view the journey, only whether they can also download its raw GPS track.

Identity verification is an optional extra on a paid account. You confirm who you are through an independent verification service, and your TravelStory profile shows as identity confirmed.

No. The check happens entirely with the verification provider - we only receive a yes or no, and a note of whether you're over 18. No passport, driving licence, photo, or date of birth is ever stored on our servers.

Because it lets you decide who can reach you. Once you're verified, you can restrict any of the following to other verified users only: who can send you a friend request, who can invite you as a companion (or accept an invite from you), who can comment on your journeys, and who can see your Public journeys. Each is a separate setting, so you can lock down contact while keeping your public journeys open to everyone - or restrict all four.

No. Everything in the app works without it. Verification only affects whether you can reach users who have chosen to restrict contact to verified accounts, and whether you can apply those restrictions yourself.

Depends which one. The friend-request, companion-invite, and comment filters only gate newrequests going forward - you'll be shown any existing friends or companions who aren't verified and asked whether to continue, and nothing is disconnected without you choosing it; an existing unverified friend can still comment or view exactly as before. The "who can see your Public journeys" filter is different and applies immediately: it's checked every time someone views a Public journey, so an unverified viewer (including an existing friend) loses access to your Public journeys the moment you turn that one on, not just going forward. The separate per-journey "identity-confirmed viewers only" toggle (below) works the same retroactive way.

Yes - a Public journey has its own "identity-confirmed viewers only" toggle, separate from your account-wide filters. It's not available on Unlisted journeys, since the link itself is already Unlisted's access control.

No, and it's worth being clear about that. It means an independent service has confirmed that person is who they say they are. It doesn't vouch for how they behave. Use the same judgement you would anywhere else - particularly when sharing journeys that show where you and your family have been.

Deleting your account immediately removes your verification status and the reference we hold for it here. We don't currently have an automated way to also instruct the verification provider to delete their own copy - that's a gap we're working to close, not something we're pretending doesn't exist. Since we never see or store your documents ourselves (see above), whatever the provider holds was never available to us in the first place.

A photo, a GPS route, a whole journey, a trip, or an annotation - click the thing itself (the photo, the route line on the map, an annotation pin) and a comment box opens already pointed at it. There's a persistent "Comment on journey" button for commenting on the journey as a whole, and one on the Trip Settings page for commenting on a trip.

You have to be logged in - there's no anonymous commenting. What a comment's visible to follows the same rules as the thing it's attached to: a comment on a Private photo is only visible to people who could already see that photo; a comment on a route, trip, or the journey itself follows the journey's own visibility. The journey owner (and any accepted companion) can always see every comment on their own journey, regardless of the individual visibility settings underneath.

On web it's a small, draggable box that floats over the map - move it wherever's out of the way, and it stays there next time you open the map. On iOS it opens as a sheet you can pull down to dismiss, except when you're commenting on a photo - there it opens as a resizable panel underneath the photo instead, so you can keep the photo in view (and drag the panel taller or shorter) while you comment. Both show the same running feed for the whole journey - every comment on every photo, route, trip, and annotation in it, newest first - and both let you reply, edit, or delete right from that feed without navigating away.

You can edit or delete your own comments at any time. A journey owner can also delete anycomment left on their own journey's content, the same way you'd moderate a comment on your own post anywhere else. Deleting doesn't erase it outright - the text is kept out of view but not permanently destroyed, and every edit is logged internally, so there's a record if a comment ever needs to be reviewed after a complaint.

Type @and start typing a name - a searchable list pops up of people "qualifying" for that comment thread: your friends, plus anyone who's already commented there. Pick someone and they get notified. You can still type a full username by hand for someone outside that suggested list, and they'll be notified too as long as they're actually able to see the comment - tagging someone into something they don't have access to doesn't work.

Tap the bell icon next to any comment in that specific thread to mute it. It only silences future notifications for that one photo/route/trip/journey/annotation's comments - it doesn't hide the thread itself, and you can unmute it the same way any time.

Tap Reportand pick a category - it drives what happens next. Illegal or dangerous content, sexual content, and content posted about someone without their consent hide immediately on a single report, pending review, while other categories may need more than one independent report first. Hiding is temporary and reversible, and isn't a finding that anyone did anything wrong - we aim to review hidden content within 48hours, and if that window passes unreviewed the content is automatically restored rather than staying hidden indefinitely. A journey owner can also delete a comment outright on their own journey (see above). There's also a standing rate limit on how quickly any one person can post comments, to keep a bad-faith burst from flooding a thread in the first place, and reporting abusively - filing reports you know are false - carries its own consequences, from losing the ability to auto-hide content by reporting it up to account suspension.

You'll be told what was affected and the broad category of the report - not who reported it. If you think the decision was wrong, you can appeal it with one tap, which sends it back for another review. Some trusted, identity-confirmed users are given moderator access to review reported content - they're bound by a confidentiality agreement and only ever see what a specific report concerns, never your account or content more broadly. Suspected child sexual abuse material is handled separately and more strictly than anything else: it's never shown to a delegated moderator at all, only to us directly, and is reported to the relevant authorities.

A Free account can have up to 3 journeys, each with up to 35 photos. Video isn't available on Free. Once you're at the journey limit, creating a new one prompts you to upgrade. Paid removes the journey limit, raises the photo limit to 1000 per journey, adds video, and unlocks optional identity verification (see the "Identity verification" section) - currently £5.00a month. Everything else - tracking, places, companions, sharing - works the same on both. See "What are the file size and video length limits?" below for the per-file limits, which apply equally on both plans.

A photo can be up to 20MB, and a video up to 500MB and 150 seconds long. These are the same on Free and Paid, and separate from the per-journey photo-count limit above - tuned for what a typical phone camera produces, not a hard technical ceiling, so they may change if that stops being generous enough.

Nothing already there gets deleted. If you're over the Free plan's journey or per-journey photo limit, or have video on a journey, all of it stays exactly as it was - you just can't create a new journey, or add new photos/video to one already over the limit, until you're back under it or upgrade again.

TravelStory doesn't take live payment yet - Paid is granted manually during the private beta, so there's no subscription to cancel through the app today. Once real billing exists, cancelling will work the same way as any downgrade: your account reverts to Free and everything already there is kept, not deleted (see the question above). The full cancellation, refund, and statutory-rights detail will be published in the Terms before any real charge is ever taken.

Your display name, username, city (optional), and date of birth (required at sign-up, to confirm you're old enough to use TravelStory). You can also list public interest tags (like "vanlife" or "solotravel") so people with shared interests can find you via Discover. There's also a privacy toggle that controls whether your profile can be found/friended by people who don't already know your exact username.

The bell icon shows friend requests, companion invites, general alerts (like "photos need placing" after a bulk upload), and comment activity - someone replying on a thread you're part of, or @mentioning you - needing your attention, with a count badge when something's unread. On iOS, and now also in your browser if you turn it on from the Notifications page, these also arrive as push notifications when the app/tab isn't open (Android will too, once it's released - the same underlying push service already supports it). On web and iOS alike, tapping a comment/mention notification jumps you straight to that thread, already opened and ready to reply - if it was on a photo, it opens the photo itself too, not just the comment box. Everything is kept in a Notifications history you can revisit and mark as read at your own pace.

From Settings (iOS, and Android once it's released) or your Profile page (web), open Delete Account- it walks you through exactly what gets erased, a checkbox confirming you understand it's permanent, re-entering your password, and typing a confirmation phrase, so it can't happen by accident. It takes effect immediately once confirmed, with no way to undo it. If you want a copy first, use Export My Data on the same screen - it downloads everything (your journeys as GPX, your photos, and the rest as a structured file) before you delete anything.

Only if you're on the Free plan and stay completely inactive for a long time. After 90 days with no login we'll email you a reminder; after a further 14 days with still no login, a final notice; and 14 days after that (around 4 months of inactivity in total) the account and everything on it is permanently deleted. Logging in at any point - even once - resets the whole clock, so there's no risk of losing an account you're actually using, even occasionally. Paid accounts are never affected by this, no matter how long since you last opened the app.

Check that the journey actually has a trip with GPS data or an imported track attached - an empty trip has nothing to draw. If you imported a route from a file with no timestamps of its own, make sure you gave it a sensible start and end date when prompted; an imported route with no real recording gaps should always draw as one continuous line.

Only one journey, and one trip within it, can be open at a time across your whole account. Find and end the one that's currently open before starting another - the error message names it, so it's easy to jump straight there.

Most often it's the file size limit for that type (photos and videos have separate limits) or a duplicate of something already uploaded, both of which the app tells you about directly rather than failing silently. If it just seems stuck, check your connection - a very large video over a weak signal can take a while.

Check Unplaced Media first if it's a photo - anything without clear metadata lands there rather than being filed automatically. For a journey, try switching the grouping (Recent/Year/Month/Folder) on the journeys list, since a filter left set from a previous visit can make it look like something's missing when it's just filtered out.